FC Member banned due to Phishing getting her account

A FC Member got her account taken over in a phishing scheme. She followed a link to "The Loadstone" site from someone she knew and you guessed it, it was NOT her friend and it was a fake Loadstone site. Her account was used for advertising RMT and SE did what they should have done and banned her account.

She immediately contacted SE and they had her re set her password and said they would work on getting her account re instated. I'm not looking for sympathy for my FC member, she should have been more carful. what I want to know is if anyone else has had something similar happen to them and how long did it take SE to investigate restore an account?

Phishing and scam accounts seem to be on the rise. My advice is no one should ever click a link from anyone...friend or no. Use google and search for the site there. Feel free to bookmark the one you know you have used before so there is no mistake.

She should've gone to the Lodestone instead.

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Originally Posted by SnakeWeasel

A FC Member got her account taken over in a phishing scheme. She followed a link to "The Loadstone" site from someone she knew and you guessed it, it was NOT her friend and it was a fake Loadstone site. Her account was used for advertising RMT and SE did what they should have done and banned her account.

She immediately contacted SE and they had her re set her password and said they would work on getting her account re instated. I'm not looking for sympathy for my FC member, she should have been more carful. what I want to know is if anyone else has had something similar happen to them and how long did it take SE to investigate restore an account?

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It happens far more often than it should.

Character rollbacks seem to take 10-14 days most of the time, though it can be longer. Your FC member needs to know that most items/gil obtained on the character during the rollback waiting period will be lost when the rollback is finally processed. They need to keep that in mind if they intend to keep playing the character during the waiting period.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

It happens far more often than it should.

Character rollbacks seem to take 10-14 days most of the time, though it can be longer. Your FC member needs to know that most items/gil obtained on the character during the rollback waiting period will be lost when the rollback is finally processed. They need to keep that in mind if they intend to keep playing the character during the waiting period.

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Thanks that's the info I was looking for, it's been at least that long. T he FC member sends requests for updates on the ticket ever few days and so far she only gets "We are working on it"

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Originally Posted by weebtext

She should've gone to the Lodestone instead.

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Agreed however the site she went to looked identical to the loadstone log in page. It was a well done phishing scheme, most likely it was a screen shot of the Loadstone page overlaid on the bogus site.

Let me guess the message was something along the lines of, "Leaving the game, 300m giveaway on forums.square-enix/com-np-ty-for-ur-account-info/ffxiv/threads/yadayada"?
Key part obviously being after the ".com" portion, if there's literally any dashes after the ".com" you know immediately it's a scam, and that's how they get ya.

Lotta those going around lately, especially if you spend anytime in a major city, most notably Limsa Lominsa for me.

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Originally Posted by SnakeWeasel

Agreed however the site she went to looked identical to the loadstone log in page. It was a well done phishing scheme, most likely it was a screen shot of the Loadstone page overlaid on the bogus site.

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That's what happens when you go to the Loadstone instead of the Lodestone.

It happens all the time and this is what normally happens. A player reports the phishing tells and their account gets banned temporarily. The phishers usually try to take away gil including any they can access from the FC. SE is able to do a rollback to restore the gil on the player, but a lot of people say it takes months and once it's restored all the progress in between is erased, which makes it not worth it unless they had a lot of gil.

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Originally Posted by Vid

Let me guess the message was something along the lines of, "Leaving the game, 300m giveaway on forums.square-enix/com-np-ty-for-ur-account-info/ffxiv/threads/yadayada"?
Key part obviously being after the ".com" portion, if there's literally any dashes after the ".com" you know immediately it's a scam, and that's how they get ya.

Lotta those going around lately, especially if you spend anytime in a major city, most notably Limsa Lominsa for me.

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That's the one. The twist was that she got the link from a friend not from a shout so she thought "Well if my friend is doing it, it must be legit"

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Originally Posted by SnakeWeasel

That's the one. The twist was that she got the link from a friend not from a shout so she thought "Well if my friend is doing it, it must be legit"

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trust no one.. ascians are everywhere

Everyone's missing the point.

As bad as it was for them to fall for the phishing link, I'm pretty sure SE can tell by the ip if they've been hacked or not. Whoever in SE handles these types of things should probably look into it.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

Phishing and scam accounts seem to be on the rise. My advice is no one should ever click a link from anyone...friend or no. Use google and search for the site there. Feel free to bookmark the one you know you have used before so there is no mistake.

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Exactly. Someone asked me yesterday to send them a link to join a Discord server to which I replied that I ain't sending links in-game and none should be trusted or else it might end up as phishing.

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Originally Posted by SnakeWeasel

That's the one. The twist was that she got the link from a friend not from a shout so she thought "Well if my friend is doing it, it must be legit"

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Sounds like the friend had already been hacked after falling for the scam themselves. Hopefully she contacted the friend so they can begin their own account recovery and character rollback.

My advice is always to talk to the friend if they send a tell out of the ordinary to make certain it is the friend and not someone else.

Damn your friend who tells people already get tempered...

If you get caught in those "free" giveaways, in 2022, I dont know what to tell you, or your friends in this case, common sense.

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Originally Posted by SnakeWeasel

That's the one. The twist was that she got the link from a friend not from a shout so she thought "Well if my friend is doing it, it must be legit"

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Any gil giveaways sent via tell are a scam, period. Anything sent via tells that involves a link is most likely one as well. If your FC member really wants to try to win free gil, they should go to an RP venue during a period they have a giveaway and try that. Those are usually more legit.

Sadly, after people create their account, they have little reason to visit the Lodestone again. But here is the number one flag

The REAL Lodestone does NOT ask for your 2FA on the first page with Accountname and password

Some simple rule that everyone should know about Cyber-security :

First, you want to read completely the Adress send to you. If it contains something odd, like ".com-l.me" or something like that, then it's 100% a scam. You should never click on this. Square Enix official website is : https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone (The "Eu" in the adress may change depending on language)

Any other adress is not an official one, and should be ignored !

Second, If you are still not sure, ask your "friend" from an other platform. If he don't respond, or have no clue what's going on, just ignore the link, report the character to the GM and say to your friend that they have been hacked. (Please use a Single usage password with the help of your phone, this will help tremendously not being hacked.)

Third, no one will ever do a lottery with 300M gils in it, it's just such a stupid amount of money, you don't want to get rid of this much. It doesn't make any sense at all. If you can avoid scam IRL, you can do it in FFXIV too. It's not that hard, avoid those thing and report immediatly to the GM.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

Phishing and scam accounts seem to be on the rise. My advice is no one should ever click a link from anyone...friend or no. Use google and search for the site there. Feel free to bookmark the one you know you have used before so there is no mistake.

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this message should if by some miracle be highlighted plain and simple dont touch links search for the thing they want you to look at i have known some people for years and i still dont touch links from them others i do depends on the trust we share with each other but at all times be careful i saw a recent one on discord saying i had won bitcoin or something and i should follow a discord link to get my prize i laughed but everytime i look at the message there are more and more people joining the discord

They wouldn’t get phished if they werent trying to get fast free gil. No sympathy.

The phishing scams have been around for years.

I tend to just operate under the assumption that any honest giveaway is going to make itself known via shout chat or PF, not by sending random people tells.

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Originally Posted by weebtext

She should've gone to the Lodestone instead.

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The original site and the phishing site are not really distinguishable. Because the scammers insert the original site in a frame and intercept the login data. You see the original site with slightly different login fields. That's it. To avoid it, look at the URL very carefully.



Cheers

Never trust links posted in game unless!!!

1. Its coming from a Gamemaster Note:Gamemasters will NEVER randomly message you a link out of nowhere!!!
2. Posted in the server message
3. Is in a Response to a ticket you filed.
4. Located in one of the games many menu's. As in not added by a player..

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Originally Posted by bubblesbutternut

this message should if by some miracle be highlighted plain and simple dont touch links search for the thing they want you to look at i have known some people for years and i still dont touch links from them others i do depends on the trust we share with each other but at all times be careful i saw a recent one on discord saying i had won bitcoin or something and i should follow a discord link to get my prize i laughed but everytime i look at the message there are more and more people joining the discord

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People have little to no internet awareness nowadays. Back in my day (like, 15 years ago, god it feels like ages have passed since then) it was ingrained into peoples' heads that the internet was a strange and fascinating place, but that nothing could ever truly be trusted. Scams seem to be on the rise in today's world, that's for sure, and they are using similar tactics to what they were using back then. The methods have not changed, but they have gotten a bit more creative. It's just extremely obvious for anyone with any sort of awareness and internet know-how. Kinda wondering if this should be taught in schools at some point. lol

Phishing link aside, I've learned over the years that if it's too good to be true (i.e. being offered a large amount of gil with little to no effort), then it most likely is a scam.

No I haven't had any situations like the one, described.

I guess that I'm not naïve enough, to trust someone off the game (Friend or not.) to give me a legit URL, when a simple Google search, would have been sufficient enough in finding the actual site.

You should be okay as long as you didn't actually enter your information...and please for love of everything remove the link from your post.

When they do successfully phish people you almost instaneously will be logged out of your account and the password will be changed just as quickly as the information is being fed into a bot that carries out the account hijacking process automatically.

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Originally Posted by SnakeWeasel

Agreed however the site she went to looked identical to the loadstone log in page. It was a well done phishing scheme, most likely it was a screen shot of the Loadstone page overlaid on the bogus site.

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Indeed it is. I came back after a few years of not playing and dumbly copied the link and logged in, my first day back.

When the char data wouldn't pull up / nor login, was too late, I checked the URL, noticed it was bogus and changed my pw within 2 minutes of going to that link.
I was just about to goto sleep but still, I never fall for those things. That one got me. And it sounds like if you're not lightning fast in resetting the pw, you're SOL.
I would've freakin cried lol (Nothing happened, I emailed SE anyway just incase something did later on, never did)

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Originally Posted by UnrealTai

Indeed it is. I came back after a few years of not playing and dumbly copied the link and logged in, my first day back.

When the char data wouldn't pull up / nor login, was too late, I checked the URL, noticed it was bogus and changed my pw within 2 minutes of going to that link.
I was just about to goto sleep but still, I never fall for those things. That one got me. And it sounds like if you're not lightning fast in resetting the pw, you're SOL.
I would've freakin cried lol (Nothing happened, I emailed SE anyway just incase something did later on, never did)

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"i just came back after a few years, let me get this amazing giveaway of 300m that got sent to me in my private message, it has to be legit !"

It's kinda mind boggling how people let their own greed lead to them getting their account hacked and then get all surprised and blame something else for their own choices.

No one wants to give you free gil outside of maybe streamers on Twitch and RP venues (and those are clearly listed in their shout spam or on the PF). Use some common sense and don't automatically believe the random that dives into your DMs.

Something tells me people who are not native or equivalent level English speakers might be more vulnerable but that may be an unfounded assumption on my part.

Anyone on the receiving end of a phishing attempt should take the time to report it to the GM team via System - Support Desk - Contact Us - Report Harassment

You should not assume you're immune to what might appear like a clearly misleading link or scam. Approach everything online with suspicion and go the long way around.

Disseminate this old link widely as well.
17/08/2021 11:00 [Important] Be Wary of Suspicious URLs and Websites
https://sqex.to/5FvwC

I can't imagine of all the known scams over the internet , falling for the "loadstone" ... Those are as old as those 18 year old + scam mails we all get to see in our mailboxes every now and then :/ Come on...

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

If you get caught in those "free" giveaways, in 2022, I dont know what to tell you, or your friends in this case, common sense.

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It happens. I work at a place that has company email and i know better then to open wierd emails but one morning after the weekend sorting through the emails and bam i opened one i shouldnt have, a few hours later my computers locked out and my companies IT people had to switch out the computer.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

It's kinda mind boggling how people let their own greed lead to them getting their account hacked and then get all surprised and blame something else for their own choices.

No one wants to give you free gil outside of maybe streamers on Twitch and RP venues (and those are clearly listed in their shout spam or on the PF). Use some common sense and don't automatically believe the random that dives into your DMs.

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I have actually walked up to sprout and gave them everything I had when i was going to delete a character. So SOME of us do give away gil

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Originally Posted by Myrany

I have actually walked up to sprout and gave them everything I had when i was going to delete a character. So SOME of us do give away gil

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do you also send PM's to everyone saying you are giving everything away?

No? then its not quite the same thing

It is pretty hard to lose your account with a one time password activated. OTP is everyone's friend. Use it. Love it.

An important lesson to be had